2011-06-26

iCloud is an interesting product for Apple: It is moving into Google territory. For the first time, every Apple user will have free online storage that is pervasively integrated into many applications. This post gives an overview and mentions new facts that have come out.

[2012-10-03] Since this article has been written, it was decided that ECMAScript will have the special property __proto__ instead of the <| operator.

JavaScript’s prototypal inheritance is hard to understand, especially for people coming from other languages that are used to classes. This post explains that it does not have to be that way: The proposal “prototypes as classes” is a simplification of classes and inheritance in JavaScript. It might become part of ECMAScript.next, a.k.a. “the next version of JavaScript” (after ECMAScript 5). But there is also a library that allows you to use its features in today’s JavaScript. What’s intriguing about prototypes as classes is that they aren’t a radical departure from current practices, but rather a clarification of them.

Incidentally, this post is also a good introduction to JavaScript inheritance, because the basics are easier to understand with prototypes as classes.

Windows 8 introduced a new kind of application to the world of Windows: The immersive application with a tablet-first design [1]. Immersive applications will dominate Windows 8, existing applications will be relegated to a second-class status and accessible through a compatibility mode. When Microsoft first presented Windows 8, it gave the impression that immersive apps can only be written in HTML5. The article “Windows 8 for software developers: the Longhorn dream reborn?” on Ars examines whether that is true. This post summarizes the article.

2011-06-23

The post “Classes in Coffeescript” contains an interesting juxtaposition of CoffeeScript code and the JavaScript it is translated to. This post examines the result of the translation in more detail, which nicely illustrates how subclassing works in JavaScript. To understand the following, you should be familiar with JavaScript’s prototypal inheritance (explained here).

It used to be that some JavaScript engines weren’t picky about trailing commas inside an object literals, while others threw a syntax error. The ECMAScript 5 language specification [1] has made trailing commas legal, via the following syntax rule (in Sect. 11.1.5):

2011-06-16

Someone making an iPhone lock screen app with a 4-digit passcode anonymously logged the passcodes. That led to the removal of his app from the app store. The app is called “Big Brother”, which to me sounds like a giveaway for what it does. The author now lists the 10 most commonly used codes in a a blog post.
[Source: Marco Arment]

2011-06-15

If you have ever read the “Gang of Four” book on design patterns [1] or worked with the Eclipse Java IDE (and platform) then you are probably familiar with the name Erich Gamma who was deeply involved in both. Recent news was that Gamma had left IBM and stopped working on Eclipse [4]. Now Microsoft announces that he will join them [source: Heise via Ludwig Adam]. Quote:

2011-06-13

When I watched the original Star Trek TV series as a kid in the late 1970s, it was a revelation: a new magical world opened up. Like fairy tales, but cooler, because it all seemed so real (remember: I was a kid). Since then, Trek TV series and movies have had their ups and downs. The last outing of the franchise, “Star Trek (2009)” [amazon.com, itunes.com], is a lot of fun, even though its story does not leave me completely satisfied. I recently re-watched it and collected several things that you might not know about it. [Warning: spoilers.]

2011-06-10

Sometimes you play a movie file and video and audio are out of sync: You either see someone talk before you hear them or vice versa. This post explains how to fix this on the cross-platform movie player VLC.

2011-06-08

Bookmarklets are little plugins for your browsers: JavaScript programs packed into javascript: URLs that you add to your bookmarks and start by clicking on them. They perform an operation on the currently open web page such as submitting it to Twitter. There are even bookmarklets that transform the current web page, for example, to add icons that, when clicked, add an event to Google Calendar. A separate post explains what bookmarklets are in more detail. This post tells you how to implement bookmarklets. It presents techniques, tools, and patterns for doing so.

2011-06-07

As a result, from 1 August, Google will only support what it calls "modern browsers". By this it means the latest versions and major prior releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

As new versions of these are released, Google will get its web services working with that and then drop support for the third-oldest version.

Support in this sense means that Google will only do compatibility testing with more up-to-date browsers. It will not carry out tests with older programmes and can make no guarantees that web services will work with them.

2011-06-05

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Apple Retail has created a “thank you” poster for its employees. Mac Rumors has published a photo of the poster and transcribed its contents. This post tries to bring a little more structure into the text. Some of the things that are listed are pure corporate speak, but there are also many interesting tidbits.

2011-06-04

There is a video on YouTube where Joe Belfiore (whose title is the slightly weird “corporate vice president, Windows Phone Program Management”) shows off the features of the new Windows Phone 7 update called Mango. This post summarizes the highlights.

I’ve always wondered why spam could not be prevented by educating the public to not purchase things advertised in spam emails. A study mentioned in a New York Times article follows a similar train of thought: By stopping banks from accepting money for spam offers, one could destroy the revenue stream of spammers. Quote:

Make no mistake: Windows 8 means that Microsoft is completely rethinking its operating system efforts, from the ground up. Ballmer wasn’t kidding when he called Windows 8 Microsoft’s riskiest product bet, back in October 2010 [4].